Lines interrupted by drawings

[Koen G]

Thank you Marco, this is the kind of research I like to read. I didn't react sooner because I wanted to be able to take my time with it.

When a word encounters an image and the text wants to continue on the other side, there are a few options:

1. the word is split
   
2. the final complete word before the image is squeezed in (or the scribe takes into account his spacing to make it fit well)
   
3. the final word before an image is truncated
   

There are probably more options, but some of those are less likely. For example that an image splits text into various columns like in a newspaper.

You say that words before an image are shorter, while words after an image are the same. This rules out (1), because in that case words after the image would also be shorter. 

(3) seems to be the most logical candidate, but maybe we cannot completely rule out (2): there may be a statistically higher chance that a short word can still be added rather than a long word fitting nicely before the image.

If (3) is the case, then this might mean that the more frequent glyphs before mid-line break indicate truncation.

Edit: I now see that you say similar things in your reply to David